“L’archeologia dell’Etruria e il senese Pietro Piccolomini: attorno a un inedito compendio di antichità etrusche”

This paper presents an unpublished essay on the archaeology of ancient Etruria written by the sienese count Pietro Piccolomini Clementini at the beginning of the Twentieth century and preserved in the State Archive of Siena. Although being one of the protagonists of the earliest archaeological discoveries in the territory of Siena after the Unification of Italy, primarily because of his sudden death at twenty-seven years old in 1907, Pietro Piccolomini was not able to publish a large corpus of manuscripts (currently under review by the authors of this paper). Beside the antiquarian interest, this “Compendium of the Etruscan Antiquities” is not only of particular importance because it provides new evidence on the archaeological background of Pietro Piccolomini and on his knowledge of the archaeology of ancient Etruria, but also because it testifies to the cultural milieu in Siena at the end of the Nineteenth century and on the radical transformations that took place around the new laws for the protection of cultural heritage of 1902 and 1903.